A tour begins in the Entrance Court of the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven near a newly installed eighteenth century sculpture, “Samson Slaying a Philistine,” by John Cheere.

A tour begins in the Entrance Court of the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven near a newly installed eighteenth century sculpture, “Samson Slaying a Philistine,” by John Cheere.

Photo: Arnold Gold — New Haven Register/file

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The Yale Center for British Art in New Haven reopened to the public in May 2016 after a $33 million conservation project.

The Yale Center for British Art in New Haven reopened to the public in May 2016 after a $33 million conservation project.

Photo: Arnold Gold — New Haven Register/file

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Arnold Gold — New Haven Register
Work continues on two new Yale University residential colleges in New Haven on 2/27/2017. The two colleges, Pauli Murray College and Benjamin Franklin College, are slated to open in the fall of 2017. less

Arnold Gold — New Haven Register
Work continues on two new Yale University residential colleges in New Haven on 2/27/2017. The two colleges, Pauli Murray College and Benjamin Franklin College, are ... more

Photo: Digital First Media

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Duo Dickinson: New Haven is putting its money where its Modernism is

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New Haven is putting its money where its Modernism is.

New Haven has spent more money on the restoration and preservation of mid-20th century architectural masterpieces than any other city of its size, anywhere.

Arguably the highest world-wide recognition “of works that exemplify excellence in architecture, interior architecture and urban design” by the American Institute of Architects, Knight was awarded one of two awards for renovation. The other for the renovation of part of Carnegie Hall.

Selected from roughly 700 submissions, it’s almost impossible to convey the depth of subtlety required to bring a building like Kahn’s masterpiece into technological efficiency and seamlessly revamp spaces to suit new exhibits, archival and code requirements and keep the architectural icon’s essential aesthetic completely intact. The awards jury described it as a “multi-year conservation project (that) renewed interior finishes that had grown tired and worn; restored and expanded teaching spaces that were oversubscribed and underequipped; fortified spaces for exhibition, storage, and study of the growing collection; and replaced vital building systems which had reached the end of their practical life.”

But this level of care has happened on an ongoing basis in New Haven for the last decade: Paul Rudolph’s 1963 Art and Architecture Building – now renamed for the architect – was completely brought back by architect Charles Gwathmey to its original state a few years ago. After that the Yale Art Gallery had all three of its conjoined buildings fully restored and enhanced by Ennaed Architects. Architect Eero Saarinen’s Morse and Stiles residential colleges were renovated and invisibly expanded by Kieran Timberlake. The updating and similarly subtle expansion of Saarinen’s other signature Yale structure, Ingalls Rink, by Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo was finished a few years ago as well. Most recently the Beinecke Library designed by Gordon Bunshaft of SOM architects reopened this fall after an extraordinary (and also invisible) complete upgrade into 21st century technology of its 1963 systems and surfaces.

There are many more, and not just by Yale. Both the Knights of Columbus buildings, the tower and museum, were renovated at great cost. Efforts are being made to preserve John Johansen’s 1967 Dixwell Avenue Congregational Church, and most promising is IKEA’s announced desire to restore what’s left of Marcel Breuer’s Armstrong Rubber Headquarters into an adaptive reuse of its long abandoned building.

There are many larger issues involved beyond the aesthetic preservation of these relatively new structures. “Sustainability” as an ethos has a core tenant: “The Greenest building is the one you do not tear down.” Additionally, mid-20th century buildings, masterpieces or not, all had some terrible technological aspects: single pane plate glass glazing, terribly leaky flat roofs, non-existent or minimal insulation, toxic materials such as PCBs and asbestos and often zero handicapped accessibility.

But the largest perspective goes beyond code-compliance and remedying bad material choices. These Modernist renovations are venerational, meaning they show extreme deference to the original design. The new work often undoes defiling “remuddlings.” For example, the old A & A/Rudolph Hall at Yale had multiple rounds of wrecking the architect’s seminal vision. This perspective values exact re-creation of every aspect of the Modernist ethic as embodied in the building at the moment the paint was dry.

This new round of renovation is a new branch of the Historic Preservation movement. The irony is that “Modern” is deemed to be “Historic”. The question is not whether beauty should be preserved: nor even if Modernist Architecture is, in fact “beauty.” The question, for me, is whether an ethos of architectural preservation is historic when it celebrates the designer (sometimes still living, as with Kevin Roche’s Knights of Columbus Tower).

Maintenance in buildings happens every day – mostly keyed to safety and reducing the cost of use. But preservation – renovation in total fealty to the original design – has traditionally happened to preserve a moment in time that is at risk of being lost. Many standards for consideration for a building’s qualification as “historic” have an age criteria: often 50 years or older, but these criteria are shifting as Modernist buildings demand attention or are threatened with demolition.

The Historic Preservation Movement was born when a 54-year-old building was torn down – McKim, Mead & White’s Penn Station in New York City. It was an imitation of Classical Architecture based on the Roman baths of Caracalla – it was demo-ed with fewer years on earth than the original Yale Art Gallery by Kahn. But the outrage over its loss was based on its perceived historic connection to the city (especially in contrast with what replaced it - a truly ugly building). In fact, the 1969 version is so ugly that there is a proposal by Architects Richard Cameron and James Grimes of Atelier & Co. to replace it with a new building that exactly replicates the 1910 version.

Would a new building of a 1910 design be “historic”? Is the restoration of a 1974 building “historic preservation”? The word “history” is not a style. The new Yale Colleges by Robert A.M. Stern reproduced James Gamble Rogers 1920/30’s Yale college’s re-creations that were designed in the spirit of 19th century Gothic Revival architecture that religiously reproduced Medieval Gothic buildings. These not-yet finished buildings are certainly not “historic”, but they are “traditional” in style, not provenance.

History is a funny thing. The lunch you ate yesterday is part of your history, but the last lunch you had before you left for college, or the military or your wedding is, for you, “historic”.

Maybe the appropriation of the word “historic” in the historic preservation of Modernist Architecture should have a temporary renaming to “Architectural Preservation.” That name change would be temporary for each building as time marches on. When we disregard the value of future history, present beauty or the embodied energy present in any given building we have taken the easy way out.

Whether its “historic preservation”, “sustainability” or “architectural preservation” buildings are part of the human condition: historic, aesthetic and practical. Perspective in appreciating architecture is a good thing – each of us misses a building that has gone away, and there are lessons in loss, no matter what those lessons are named.